


like calls to like

by Areiton



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Anal Sex, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Oral Sex, POV Steve Rogers, Past Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Past Riley/Sam Wilson, Rough Sex, Sam Wilson Needs a Hug, Steve Rogers Feels, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:34:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25559653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Areiton/pseuds/Areiton
Summary: It’s not healthy. He knows it’s not.But he goes back, and every time, Sam bends to him, opens to his kisses, bites sobs into his skin.It’s not healthy. It’s not like he feels whole.But he goes back.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Riley/Sam Wilson, Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson
Comments: 4
Kudos: 81





	like calls to like

Steve sees him when he’s running. Pretty and sweating hard and running from his demons—he can see it, the way he drives himself too hard, the way his eyes are sightless and empty, the way he gasps for breath, lungs working like bellows. 

He recognizes it because he does the same. 

~*~ 

He comes home and they hang a medal on his chest and tell him he did something great but there’s a gaping hole in his world, a spot that only Bucky ever filled, and when the brass congratulate him, when they tell him he’s a  _ hero _ they never mention the part of his soul he left in the bloody sand. 

~*~ 

He chases the running man, because he’s got a nice ass and because there’s a part of him, still, that believes in having each other’s back, in protecting your brothers. He doesn’t know the running man, but he  _ knows _ him. 

~*~ 

“On your left,” Steve murmurs, and the man—the running man—startles a little, leaning away from him as the group session fills up. “You,” he says, softly. 

Steve smiles, and holds out a hand. “Steve Rogers.” 

“Sam,” he answers, slowly. “Sam Wilson.” 

~*~ 

They still run, in the mornings, but now Steve knows what Sam is running from. 

He knows what Steve is running from too. 

There’s a kind of comfort in the vulnerability of it all, and a little bit of relief, too—like calls to like, and Sam losing the man he loves sings to the broken pieces of Steve’s soul. 

~*~ 

Sometimes group is easy. Listening, checking the therapy box off and going back to the bullshit of his life. 

Sometimes group is hell, rips apart the still healing scars and scoops out the poison and lays him open to the bone, ugly and raw. 

He finds Sam in the bathroom on their fourth group together, muffling sobs into his bitten palm, and he doesn’t really think because his whole world is  _ hurt,  _ is  _ loss,  _ is  _ aching empty nothing.  _

Like calls to like. 

He kisses Sam, a biting kiss full of tears, bitter on his tongue, and Sam-- 

Sam comes to life under his hands, desperate and hungry. 

Like calls to like, and Sam sings to the broken pieces of Steve’s soul. 

~*~ 

It’s not healthy. He knows it’s not. 

But he goes back, and every time, Sam bends to him, opens to his kisses, bites sobs into his skin. He fucks into his tight pretty ass and it’s the only time he doesn’t feel scooped out and empty, raw and wounded. 

It’s not healthy. It’s not like he feels whole. Most of the time, he goes home, heartsick and sad, curls alone in his big bed and cries for Bucky. 

But he goes back. 

~*~ 

They fuck most, when they’re both a little angry, a little hurt, a little bit raw. 

Steve fucks Sam, the first time he tells the group about Bucky, about the men he lost over there. 

Sam sucks his cock for the first time when he’s still got tears on his face and Riley’s name in his mouth and the horror of watching his lover fall is still bright in his dark eyes. 

It’s never gentle—it's biting kisses and hard hands and almost bruising thrusts. It’s shoving each other into hard walls and  _ taking _ because they can still take, here, from each other. 

It’s never gentle and it’s never about the person they’re fucking, and it sits in his gut, the way Sam’s eyes clench closed, the way his lips shape Riley’s name and Bucky’s burns on his own tongue and he compares them, can’t fucking help but to compare them. 

It’s mean and it’s angry and he walks away feeling used, every damn time. 

But that’s the whole fucking  _ point.  _

_ ~*~  _

Sam tells the group that the anniversary is coming up, and the afternoon ends exactly where Steve expects it to—shoved against the wall, Sam fucking him and snarling. 

After, when he’s got his jeans pulled back up and Sam is reaching for his smokes and the door, Steve catches his elbow, passes him a scrap of paper. 

“Text me, if it gets too bad,” he says, and Sam stares at it for a long time, before he shoves the number in his pocket and nods. 

~*~ 

It changes things, and it doesn’t change a thing at all. 

Sam texts when he screams himself awake from nightmares, and sometimes they meet for coffee and pie and a dirty blowjob in the alley by Steve’s favorite diner. 

Steve calls when he’s so tired he can’t run and too consumed with grief and rage to sleep, and Sam talks to him, all dirty, filth spilling like wine over the line until Steve comes, gasping and messy and Sam laughs like a cocky bastard. 

It changes things, and it doesn’t. Because they are both using each other, still. 

Steve thinks maybe that’s all they can do. 

~*~ 

“Do you think he’s healthy, for you?” Dr. Erksine asks and Steve wants to shrug. Wants to dismiss it. 

But his eyes are gritty and his hands are jittery and all he can hear is Sam’s sobs the night before, when he let Steve fuck him in the stairwell of his apartment, the way he’d looked so angry and so fucking  _ sad, _ when he shoved his cock into his pants, still hard and ducked out, without letting Steve do much. 

It had hurt, stung the way letting Bucky down had always stung. 

Steve didn’t want to examine that too close either. 

“I wish he were,” Steve says, finally and his therapist smiles, sadly. 

~*~ 

He tries, is the thing. 

Because there is this—he  _ likes _ Sam. He likes the man’s sass and snark, the way he snarls when he’s backed into a corner, the way he fucks like it’s a fight, the way he laughs with his whole goddamn body and never puts up with Steve’s shit. He likes that sometimes, Sam will smile, a fond, little crinkle to his eyes and his mouth twisted up and kissable and he’ll call Steve a crazy white boy, because Steve wants to fuck on a dance floor but he never, not once, backs down from a challenge. 

He likes that when Steve misses Bucky so damn bad his teeth ache with it, and body shudders around the hole where Bucky should be—Sam knows. 

Sam knows and he fucks him whole, and sometimes, when he’s sticky and sore and he doesn’t feel  _ haunted _ , Sam will curl around him and kiss away his tears. 

He tries, because he _ likes _ Sam. They’re broken, the both of them—but maybe they could be whole, together. 

~*~ 

Sam calls him, and he’s drunk and Steve is gentle, but Sam’s mouth is hungry and insistent and tastes of vodka and ice. 

Sam calls him and he’s sobbing, and he comes on Steve’s belly, tears smearing with spit and come. 

Sam calls him. 

Often enough that Steve knows the pattern—late nights during the week will be drunk. Middle of the night are tear-stained and needy. Weekends are fueled by fury and kinetic energy. 

Mornings are weed-soaked and almost playful, as playful as Sam ever gets, and Steve hates how much he likes the mornings, and hates how rarely they happen. 

~*~ 

He loses weight, something his therapist and his doctor comment on, worried. He isn’t sleeping enough, and he’s losing weight. There are a few days he goes without thinking about Bucky and he realizes he’s so busy keeping Sam from spiralling apart he hasn’t had  _ time _ to miss Bucky in almost a week. 

~*~ 

“You can’t help him, Steven. Two drowning men can only destroy each other.” 

“I need to, though. I  _ need _ to save him.” 

Erksine smiles at him, very very sadly. “Saving Sam Wilson will not mean you have saved Bucky.” 

~*~ 

He kisses Sam,. 

They kiss often enough it isn’t remarkable—Sam is slick and hot around his cock, almost limp for a change, not fighting Steve at all. 

Steve kisses him, licks into his pretty mouth and swallows down all the breathless gasps Sam gives up and if he cries—crying during sex is so common between them, that Sam doesn’t even notice. 

~*~ 

He texts Sam. 

_ This isn’t good for us. For either of us. Maybe, one day, we can be.  _

Sam doesn’t answer him, but he didn’t really think he would. 

~*~ 

He still sees Sam at group, for a while, before he stops showing up—Steve finds out from a friend that Sam switched to a different group meeting, and he’s glad, glad Sam didn’t stop completely. 

He still sees him running in the mornings, sometimes, and that looks is still there, the one that’s wild and haunted and blank, all at once. 

But his phone is quiet and his bed is empty and he feels like there’s a piece of him, missing. 

Dr. Erksine smiles and nods, and tells him, gently, that it’s time to start healing. 

~*~ 

Slowly. 

Painfully. 

He does. 

~*~ 

Grief, Steve learns, never really goes away. You only learn how to live with it, how to carry it so that it isn’t drowning you. 

He does. He learns. 

He thinks about Sam, sometimes, and hopes that he learned too. 

~*~ 

“On your left.” 

The voice is familiar, snarky and smiling and warm, and it’s been three years, since he saw Sam, since-- 

He blinks at the man in front of him, the neat clean clothes and the carefully trimmed goatee and the lips he still dreams about, sometimes, tipped in a warm smile. He looks just the same, and different, too—his eyes are bright, laughing.  _ Happy.  _

“Hey, Steve,” Sam says, and Steve smiles. 


End file.
